I’ve had a few people ask me about the nuts and bolts of Signal Zero, so that’s what I’m showing this week. This is the basic conflict resolution mechanic. If you don’t want to use a sub-system or are just looking for how the majority of the game is played, this is the mechanic that answers that. It might be a little hard to follow without the full context of the character creation chapter but hopefully it’s still understandable.
I’ve had a couple of people comment that it sounds really complex. While there is a certain level of complexity here I think that it’s purely in the explanation. The execution of the system is fairly simple, it’s just hard to describe how to get there. That said, this system has not been playtested in a full game scenario. We’ve toyed around with individual abstract situations but nothing for an extended game session.
Foundation
I still struggle with this question: Do I present the Character Creation rules first or the Basic Mechanics first? It seems like you always need the context of one from another one. I’ve decided to open the book with a summary of the basic mechanics, then character creation, and then jump back and talk more in detail about the mechanical elements of how the game is played. Here, first up, is a basic rundown of how Signal Zero is played.
Signal Zero uses a pool of ten-sided dice for all of its conflict resolution. Whenever you come into a conflict that you need an impartial decision on its outcome you can use the Foundation mechanic. There are other systems presented later that will help represent other facets of life in Signal Zero but at the end of the day you can always just fall back on the Foundation rolls.
To begin, players will need to gather up a pool of dice. Every roll always uses two Traits, an Attribute and a Behavior. You take the Rank of each trait and add it to your die pool. Next check to see if your character has any appropriate Reputation or Equipment that would help you in this task. Again, you’ll add the Rank of those to your die pool. Those are the only places from your character sheet that you can gather dice but you’re not done building your pool yet. Now check with your GM (or another Player depending on who your conflicting with) about any possible Reputation or Baggage that you can use against your opponent. Add any applicable Ranks to your die pool.
Jeremy is playing Richard Devoux, a hard-boiled detective and raging alcoholic. He’s been hired by a wife to see if her husband is cheating on her, pretty standard stuff. Rob, the GM, decides we need to know how this investigation turns out and asks Jeremy to make an investigation roll. Jeremy first look at his Attributes and decides he’s just watching, so it gathers 3 dice for his Cunning Attribute. With Behaviors Jeremy decides he doesn’t have a good reason to do this outside of being paid so he gathers 1 die for his Wealth Behavior. Luckily, Richard is a good detective so he gets 4 dice from his reputation of Seattle’s Greatest Detective. Jeremy also has his trusts Binoculars that he adds 2 dice for. Jeremy asks Rob if the husband has a Reputation or Baggage that can be used against him and Rob tells him to take 2 dice for the husband’s Adulatory Baggage. In total, Jeremy has a pool of 12 dice.
You can only use one of your Reputations and only one piece of Equipment per roll. If there are multiple Reputations or pieces of Equipment that could apply to a roll you can spend to 1¤ per additional element you want to roll. For example, if you want to use Two Reputations and Three pieces of Equipment it will cost you 3¤ .
Now that you have your die pool built take all those dice and roll them out. Now Signal Zero will separate itself from the majority of other games because you actually have some more decisions to make with your result dice. Signal Zero uses something called Number Groups. As a brief aside, Number Groups are sets of the same number. So any 7s you roll are one Number Group while any 4s you roll are another Number Group. When you have your result you’ll want to sort your dice into their Number Groups. When in the book Number Groups are written like 1×10, where the 1 is the number of dice in the group and 10 is the result on the die.
Every roll is allowed to keep one Number Group for free. After that you’ll need to see if you have a Skillset that apply to the roll. You keep an additional number of Number Groups for every Rank you have in the Skillset. You can keep additional Number Groups by spending 1¤ per group kept. Any Number Groups that are not kept are then discarded.
Jeremy rolls out his dice and sorts his results into the following number groups: 2×1, 3×3, 2×4, 2×6, 1×7 & 2×9. His Detective Skillset lets him keep an extra 3 Number Groups so Jeremy decides to keep the 2×9, 2×6, 2×4, and 3×3 groups, discarding the rest.
The Game Master has assigned a number of Aspects to your roll. These are the various factors that need to be decided, such as how quickly you accomplish your intention, how accurate the results are, and a number of other things. There are also a series of standard Aspects they apply to most rolls. The Target Number for every Aspect is 12. You assign your kept results to the Aspects of the roll. Dice assigned to an Aspect are then added together and if their total is greater than 12 you achieve your desired result. If your total is greater than 15 you gain another level of success and for every 5 points after that you gain another level. If your result is less than 5 your result turns out extra bad for you.
Rob tells him the investigation has the following Aspects: Speed (How quickly Richard can wrap up this case), Accuracy (How strong the evidence against the Husband is), and Size (How much evidence the investigation turns up). Jeremy can also use the Currency (How much extra he gets paid), Reputation (How much this case help’s his Seattle’s Greatest Detective reputation), and Advancement (How much he learns from this case).
After thinking about it for a moment Jeremy decides that he wants to nail this guy to the wall, so he assigns 1×9, 1×4, and 1×3 to the Accuracy and 1×9, 1×4, and 1×3 to the Size. He doesn’t really care how long the case takes but he doesn’t want it to really hurt him so he puts a single 1×6 into Speed. So far, this has cost him 4¤, so he decides to make some extra cash off this case and assigns his last 1×6 into Currency.
The final totals are 16 for Accuracy and Size, a 6 for Speed, and a 6 Currency. This means he gets a Tier 2 Success for Accuracy and Size, a failure on the Speed, and 2¤. Rob tells him that since he took his time with the case the wife got impatient and confronted her husband. He denied it all of course but when all the evidence, and there was a lot of it, turned up he broke down and confessed to the whole thing. The wife filed for divorce and it was Richard’s investigation that lead to the judge siding with the wife.